


Stray

by CandlesInTheWell



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Genre: Fairy Tales, Ficlet, Gen, Slight spoilers for October’s Exceptional Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 17:34:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16163615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CandlesInTheWell/pseuds/CandlesInTheWell
Summary: Stories have rules and forests have safe paths, but Bethany has never been good at following either.





	Stray

Once upon a time, the story goes, there was a girl who grew up in a house full of mirrors and doors and windows. Some of them opened onto walled gardens full of winding paths and climbing roses, and some onto rooftops where couriers played games of cat and serpent, and some onto city streets lit by gaslight and false stars. But one doorway led to a place of sunlight, where a cool stream whispered past towering trees, and it was there that she knew she was meant to go.

She had no parents. In stories, they never do. It was a magician who raised her – not a cruel one, inclined to keeping children in towers or offering them in sacrifice to the dark, but a man of rules all the same. He told her that the house was hers, and everything in it, and that as long as she stayed there she would be safe and want for nothing, but the door to the sunlit place, she must not ever touch.

Once upon a time, there was a girl whose brother sat with her beside the fire, in a big, empty drawing room in a big, empty house, and read her stories whenever she got lonely. In a those stories, there was always someone who wandered off-path, opened a door they shouldn’t or plucked a rose not meant to be plucked. They paid the price for it; curiosity was a curse incurred. When the girl asked about her parents, her brother told her only to be careful – of paths, of mirrors, of gifts. The magician told her that their magic was meant for him alone. Even then, his eyes were haunted, and she didn’t know why.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who wasn’t afraid of snakes.


End file.
